It is simply no secret to anyone within a mile of the German or comp-lit departments at NYU that Avital is abusive. This is boring and socially agreed upon, like the weather.

Stories about Avital’s “process” are passed, like notes in class, from one student to the next: how she reprimanded her teaching assistants when they did not congratulate her for being invited to speak at a conference; how she requires that her students be available 24/7; how her preferred term for any graduate student who has fallen out of favor is “the skunk.”

Another good essay on the Ronell case, short and to the point: read it all if you've been following this affair. An example:

To me, her hundreds of histrionic e-mails read like a humorless novel of obsessive passion. Not so, she claims; they were lighthearted fun “between two adults, a gay man and a queer woman, who share an Israeli heritage, as well as a penchant for florid and campy communications arising from our common academic backgrounds and sensibilities.” Well, all you queer Israeli academics out there, do you address your grad students as your “sweet cuddly baby” or warn them that “‘I love you too’ does not cut it darling,” if they fail to respond with sufficient enthusiasm?

In discussing the Ronell case, every article I’ve seen from The New York Times to The New Yorker takes as a given that Ronell is indeed, in the words of the Times, “one of the very few philosopher-stars of this world.” The designation has puzzled me from the start because in my own circles (Modernist and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics as well as Viennese Culture of World War I and Wittgenstein, on whom I’ve written a book and many essays), most people have never so much as heard of Avital Ronell. I myself have never met her: I did read The Telephone Book when it was published in 1991, and found it very clever but almost parodically deconstructionist, and somehow I had no desire to read those later books with titles like Crack Wars and Stupidity. I may be revealing only my own intellectual limitations here, but I would say that in our own eclectic moment, Ronell, whose Telephone Book did get a lot of attention in the early ’90s, is no longer a star in the late 2010s....

The media, whether sympathetic or not to Ronell’s case, have, in any case, accepted her self-definition as a fact. World-class star, lesbian, and Ronell is also regularly referred to as a philosopher, evidently because she is a disciple of the philosopher Jacques Derrida. But the fact is that in the US, she and her fellow deconstructionists perform their theory studies under the auspices of Comparative Literature; philosophy departments, including my own at Stanford, tend to focus on analytic philosophy and would never hire a literary theorist like Avital Ronell (or, for that matter, a Derrida). This may be a small detail, but it is important vis-à-vis the larger public’s understanding of fields of study in the Humanities and what they designate.

The media have ignored these issues because they have of necessity relied on Ronell’s friends and supporters and especially on members of Ronell’s very particular Deconstructionist circle. I say “of necessity” because in the current climate, the others — the large bulk of our profession — are understandably reluctant to get involved. Of the 50 “prominent” academics who signed the notorious Butler letter, only 11 are under 60 and another 11 are over 70! The signatories, in other words, are indeed, like Ronell herself, older Establishment figures: they hold the endowed Comp Lit, German, and French chairs in the institutions of which they are often so critical. As such, they have a vested interest in preserving what they consider the status quo: deconstructionist theory with a feminist/lesbian cast. There are of course signatories who don’t fit into this mold and no doubt signed the letter just to be collegial and supportive, but the large majority are members of the in-circle, whether in the US or in France or Germany, and except for two signatories, Manthia Diawara and Gayatri Spivak, all are white — a fact no one has mentioned but which surely tells us something....

From the perspective of other university departments or the medical school or law school, from the perspective of those who work in publishing or the TV industry or in Silicon Valley, the professor’s behavior must seem simply unbelievable. Many universities now have laws against faculty-student relationships, at least while the student is actively working with the professor in question. But more important, from the perspective, say, of a medical student or engineer: how do these Comparative Lit stars have such endless time on their hands? In one email, about two years into the relationship, Avital tells Nimrod she is available from Thursday through the entire weekend: he need merely say the word. When, outsiders ask, do these people actually do any work? Grade papers? Teach their classes? And how can knowledge in our field be so subjective and tenuous that a professor who begins by praising a given student so extravagantly then turns on him and declares that his dissertation had no solid argument?

I should only add that Ronell is a non-entity in scholarly circles devoted to the post-Kantian Continental traditions in philosophy as well, not just in analytic philosophy. When Michael Rosen and I edited the Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy more than a decade ago, her name never came up. In Nietzsche studies, she is unknown. Professor Perloff is right that it does a disservice to the other humanities to foist this character on all of them.

(I continue my summary and translation of parts of Prof. Huppauf's Tumult article, which was published last week and will be on-line September 4.)

After Ronell's coup and the movement of Ronell and Derrida to the center of the curriculum in the German Department, Professor Huppauf reports that there were now some "students who spoke English and French, but not a word of German." More alarmingly, Prof. Ronell solidified her dominance of the department through "absolute control of information," even having her secretary inform other members of the department that no one should contact any Dean "without her explicit approval"! The authoritarian environment carried over to the treatment of students: Students now "had to...learn submission to authority. Every contradiction, every doubt, drew punishment.Contradiction was heresy, and heretics were rebuked or expelled - not always with a smile, often ironic, mocking, sardonic."

The most remarkable revelation in this part of Prof. Huppauf's essay is an e-mail he reports was sent to Prof. Ronell by "an older student, a psychotherapist" who had wanted to write a dissertation under Ronell but "gave up disillusioned and left the department." Prof. Huppauf quotes from the student's e-mail (which is in English in the Tumult article as well, so this is not my translation):

...via a public Facebook posting. She is persuasive and sensible on points 2-4, but not on the first point, concerning her false description of Ronell as "a literary scholar and philosopher at New York University" who is "by all accounts, one of the great academic minds of our time." Gessen writes:

The idiom "by all accounts" actually means "by all accounts by people in a position to judge." If I were writing about a topologist, I wouldn't ask a numbers theorist about this person's abilities. If I were writing about a neuroscientist, I wouldn't ask a geneticist. I think it works the same way in the humanities. I mean, it should. In her field, AR is a superstar. This is not the first time I've seen academics dismiss entire fields, but I still find it shocking.

But the point is precisely that Gessen obviously didn't consult literary scholars and philosophers, just friends of Ronell. I heard from a literary scholar at Yale who told me that no one discussed Ronell's work anymore. And I've yet to hear from a single philosopher who had anything favorable to say about her work--most had never even heard of her, the situation I was in when this story first broke in June. So on this point, Gessen engaged in myth-making, not reporting or analysis.

UPDATE: Marjorie Perloff's views, published just today, confirm the weakness of Gessen's defense of her mischaracterization of Ronell's status.

VDG is a free service that connects graduate students to provide feedback on dissertation work. Members are grouped with two others working in the same general area of philosophy. About once a month, one member sends some work (3-6K words) to the others, who return feedback and comments in a week or so.

While advisors and committees are important, it can be incredibly helpful to discuss one’s work with peers in a lower-stakes environment, and it can be particularly enlightening to do so with those who take a different approach, outlook, or focus. Not only that, but there is evidence from psychological research that thinking about problems in relation to persons who are geographically distant can increase creativity. With students in programs from many states, countries, and every continent with a philosophy Ph.D. program, Virtual Dissertation Groups is a great way to capture some of these benefits!

As many members know, a letter written in support of a New York University faculty member accused of sexual harassment was signed by Judith Butler, who was identified as the 2020 MLA president. The letter, written without authorization from the Executive Council, runs counter to aspects of the MLA’s Statement of Professional Ethics and to the council’s own document outlining the legal duties of care and loyalty the council owes to the association. The Executive Council is a broadly representative, member-elected body, with no single member accorded any more decision-making power than any other, and no officer of the MLA speaks for the MLA unless expressly authorized to do so.

Professor Butler has apologized for allowing the MLA to be associated with the letter and has expressed regrets for arguments in it. The officers have accepted her apology.

The MLA recognizes the power disparity between faculty members and graduate students, and we affirm our strong commitment to graduate student rights and welfare and to academic professional rights and responsibilities. Those commitments will not change.

There's a cogent case against permitting use of the word, along with a reply from the editors of Philosophical & Phenomenological Research. I think the PPR editors are wrong on the first point--TERF is obviously now nothing more than a term of abuse, meant as a conversation-stopper and device of exclusion--but are correct on the second. (The factual claim in question in the article may be dubious, but a lot depends on how one interprets "verified reported incident" and "trans woman"; it's not grounds for retraction or correction that others may dispute the claim as false or misleading [it is certainly misleading].) Part of what is ironic is that the person defending the use of "TERF," philosopher Rachel McKinnon (Charleston), uses it continuously on social media as a term of abuse, meant to shut down her opponents.

Think of it this way: when I refer on the blog to anti-gay bigots as "anti-gay bigots" I am not inviting them into a dialogue or presupposing that their views merit discussion. That's great for the blog and real life, but it would be shocking if a scholarly journal discussing, say, the awful arguments against same-sex marriage were to permit a respondent to refer to the authors as "anti-gay bigots." It's no different now for "TERF" and the PPR editors erred in permitting it.

ADDENDUM: I give Justin Weinberg credit for running this essay on his blog, given that he had worked so long to cultivate it as the "safe space" blog for New Infantilists and the proponents of mindless identity politics. Predictably, some of the readers are incensed by his airing forbidden views and criticizing "vunlerable" and "marginal" individuals (i.e., an adult professional whose work appeared in a peer-reviewed journal): see, e.g., John Altmann or (predictably) Rebecca Kukla. I hope he will ignore them, and will continue to exercise intellectual courage on this and similar topics.

ONE MORE: Another commenter, near the end of the thread, says something a lot of folks in the profession are no doubt thinking:

I have for many years advocated for a more prominent place for feminism in philosophy, and I have worked hard, with considerable success, to hire people who work in feminist philosophy in my own department. I consider myself a feminist.

However, reading through this conversation and through similar debates in our discipline over the past couple of years (e.g., stuff on Leiter’s blog, the attacks on and subsequent debates about Tuvel’s article, etc.) and seeing the way at least some of the people involved in them tend to moralize what seem to me to be legitimate points of philosophical disagreement makes me wary of making new hires in my department of people working in any area that even remotely touches on gender. I am sure I am not alone in that wariness.

Senior queer scholars—Jack Halberstam, Lisa Duggan, Juana Maria Rodriguez—have closed ranks on Twitter. Their friends and colleagues and students and admirers have either joined them or are compelled to keep quiet because there are professional consequences for going against senior scholars.

This is about power.

This is also about affiliation and networks.

Job-insecure people—grad students, prospective grad students, untenured faculty, adjunct faculty—cannot afford to alienate those who might facilitate their professional advancement. I note, here, that this is precisely one of the weapons Avital Ronell used, and it is distressing to see it being deployed by senior queer scholars, no matter how implicit that deployment.

Thanks to many readers who have been sending it to me, starting less than thirty minutes after it appeared, thanks to its description of this as a "conservative philosophy blog" (another Halbertsam moment). Ms. Gessen, the author, was apparently travelling, but she did indicate she had asked for a correction, which has now appeared, much to the disappointment, I am sure, of my friend Scott Shapiro. One other misleading phrasing remains, though perhaps that too will be fixed; the article states:

Meanwhile, as I was writing this piece, Reitman’s press agent kept sending me additional materials, including a blog post by Brian Leiter, the philosopher who broke the May letter in defense of Ronell, alleging that, thirty years ago, Ronell had a relationship with Jacques Derrida’s son, which began when he was sixteen.

This phrasing makes it sound like an unsubstantiated allegation from this blog, when, in fact, as the link shows, I was quoting an article from Salon that was, in turn, quoting from a biography of Derrida, in which Ronell herself is quoted discussing the affair with Derrida's son. [UPDATE: Neil Easterbrook kindly sends along the reference: "On page 310 of Benoit Peeters' biography Derrida (Trans. Andrew Brown, NY: Polity, 2013--the French edition is 2010), *both* Ronell and Pierre Derrida (who now goes by the name Pierre Alferi) are quoted and assert that they had an affair. In June 1980, Pierre moved into Ronell's Paris apartment. The last word the bio has abt their affair is that in December 1981 Pierre was with Ronell in NYC (335)."]

As for the substance of the piece itself, I am inclined to agree with a philosopher in Europe who aptly described it as "a kind of pseudo-sophisticated piece geared totally towards deflection." The truth is this case is not that complicated. First, leading "theory" folks in literature departments disgraced themselves with their letter to NYU, so much so that the letter's primary author, Judith Butler, had finally to issue a sort-of apology. Second, if even half the allegations in the complaint filed against Ronell are true, then she engaged in abusive and unprofessional behavior with her student, for which she should probably lose her job; if the allegations are not true, then she is the victim of a frivolous lawsuit and a malicious campaign of harassment. What actually happened will be settled through an adjudicative process far better than any university's Title IX process.

I do think The New Yorker piece began on an unfortunate note, betraying its bias I suspect:

Ronell, who is sixty-six, is a literary scholar and philosopher at New York University and, by all accounts, one of the great academic minds of our time. [bolding added]

This isn't reporting, this is hagiography by a sympathetic pundit. A reporter might, for example, have tried to find out if there was a single person in the NYU Philosophy Department who thinks Ronell is "one of the great academic minds of our time." I am fairly confident I know the answer. Or consider a philosopher in Canada who wrote me last week that, "I watched an hour plus of her talks last night: absolute twaddle — mind numbingly free-associative, chaotic, name-dropping. An utter con job." As I observed in an earlier posting:

A big part of the narrative that has emerged is that Ronell is a "world-renowned scholar," an "academic rock star." I have to admit I'd never heard of her prior to this, though it seems clear she's well-known in some of the feebler parts of the humanities. Out of curiosity, I looked her up on "Google Scholar." Her most-cited authored work, apart from a translation of something by Derrida, 1989's The Telephone Book, has been cited about 560 times, less than, for example, my 2002 book on Nietzsche, and I'm not an "academic rock star." (The contrast with Judith Butler's Google Scholar citations is also striking.)

She undoubtedly has some well-known friends, some of whom, like Butler and Zizek, are undoubtedly "academic rock stars," whatever one's opinion of the work itself.

UPDATE: A philosopher elsewhere calls to my attention this rather shocking line from Gessen's article: "Reitman’s complaint, filed with the New York Supreme Court on August 16th, reads like a tawdry romance novel.” First, this is a ridiculously inapt description of the complaint. And second, as my correspondent wrote, "I cannot imagine anyone writing this about a complaint made by a potential victim against a potential accuser." This, again, suggests the author's pro-Ronell bias in this matter.

I will conclude my summer series on some of the great African-American blues musicians and composers who laid the foundation for all the best rock 'n' roll with probably the most famous of them all: Robert Johnson (1911-1938). We'll start with the "Cross Road Blues" from 1936, made famous for a later generation by Cream:

It's here, probably the first useful thing that this otherwise ludicrous and allegedly pro-Ronell site has published. It does not contain anything particularly new, but it is a cogent statement of her defense.

(Philosopher David Zimmerman [Simon Fraser], who kindly sent this essay to me, quipped: "A propos the latest screed from a 'Theory' folk that you quote.... I would never have thought to send this message to you if I believed for a moment that you produce 'a right wing blog' --- 'Theory' folks cannot get anything right!")

Philosopher Ed Erwin (Miami) further explores the topic I touched upon a couple of weeks ago in connection with his posting about the issue. I agree with the general principle: someone sanctioned for sexual harassment may still be qualified to teach, and certainly to publish and contribute to scholarship.

(A minor point: the only person legally vindicated in the lawsuit against Erwin, the University, and McGinn was Erwin himself, since the claims against him were dismissed with prejudice by the judge [i.e., they could not be rewritten and refiled]. The case against the others settled, we do not know why: it could be because the plaintiff could not prove her case, or it could be because it was no longer worth the trouble and humiliation [see my earlier discussion of the deposition].)

First there was the fact-free smear merchant Jennifer Doyle (UC Riverside), now comes Jack Halberstam, professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, and another friend of Butler, Ronell et al.. From his public Facebook page on August 20 (!):

The letter, let's remember, was released by a right wing philosophy site long before the signatories were done crafting it.

As the humanities PhD student elsewhere, who sent this to me, remarked: "I don't know if that's just plain stupid or intentionally malicious (to use the letter's favorite word), but I'm incredulous at how a tenured professor, who should be a beacon of responsibility, is resorting to such deliberate defamation." I'm less sure it's deliberate: some of these people are just having trouble coping with what their pals did, and so are unconsciously wishing away the unpleasant facts. In any case, Marjorie Perloff, the distinguished poetry scholar (emerita at USC and Stanford), soon corrects Halberstam on his FB page:

The fact is that the letter was mailed to the president of NYU on May 11. So it's not true that the signatories had not done crafting it.

The letter's content was crafted and set: that's why it was being sent to hundreds of academics around the world for signatures. There were some typos, but that letter expressed the views of Buter et al. for which she has now (finally) felt the need to apologize, sort of. Halberstam adds to this the nonsense that this is a right-wing blog (I'm about as right-wing as Adolf Reed), but as often happens with these smear merchants, they use words in highly revisionary ways: "right-wing" in this context means something more like "someone who is critical of my friends."

As the humanities PhD student who tipped me off to this latest display wrote: "I really hope, however, that this whole affair will lead to some Götter- (or Götzen-)Dämmerung within the literature departments, in the sense of a return to doing real Wissenschaft." I share that hope. Both my parents earned graduate degrees in English, before English departments were colonized by "bad philosophy" and political posturing, when English scholars really had to be historians, philologists, and genuine scholars of diction and form. (I took so many English and Comparative Literature courses, I could have had a minor in the subject.) Many, of course, still are (and I have been glad to hear from many of them, who are appalled by this whole affair), though I can still recall when A. Walton Litz resigned from the English Department at Princeton in the 1980s to join the Creative Writing Program, because he wanted to be "around people who enjoy reading books." So three cheers for the disciplined study of literary texts and the many humanities professors who maintain that scholarly tradition today.

Rutgers University will punish a history professor for comments on his Facebook page that attracted the attention of the right-wing rage machine. His comments are, rather obviously, funny and ironic, but even if they were unfunny and unironic, they appeared on his Facebook page, which is not the University's business, under its contractual commitment to academic freedom and its constitutional obligation to abide by the First Amendment. Shame on Rutgers!

Bernd Huppauf, the former Chair of German at NYU who hired Avital Ronell, has written a damning account of her tenure in the department for Tumult, a German publication (we mentioned this the other day). The hard copies of Tumult have now shipped to subscribers, and I've received permission from the editor to translate excerpts for the blog. The editor informs me that they will put Professor Huppauf's entire article on-line at their website on September 4 (I'll link to that as well when it goes live). In Prof. Huppauf's account, Prof. Ronell arrived at NYU and basically took over the department, including deposing him as Chair and turning the unit from a German Department into one in which, "We study, as a student said...French theory in English." The program was, he writes, "sabotaged," such that "Avital Ronell and Jacques Derrida had to step into the center of research and teaching," a triumph, he says, of "narcissism" over the academic program. Once Ronell took over, her secretary announced "at a department meeting that student work would no longer be accepted in which Derrida and Ronell were not cited."

I'll begin posting more about Prof. Huppauf's account soon (once I finish some work connected to my real job!).

ADDENDUM: Needless to say, I will be glad to share any signed accounts by others disputing Prof. Huppauf's account. Please send me links.

Judith Butler has submitted a letter to the editor of CHE explaining her "regrets" about the "confidential" Ronell letter. (There is no sense in which a letter being e-mailed to hundreds of academics across North America and Europe soliciting signatures is "confidential": I assume what Butler means is that it was supposed to be shared only among like-minded individuals devoted to Prof. Ronell, not academics with ethical standards.) As a reader points out, here's what would remain of the letter after excising the bits Professor Butler now regrets:

We write as long-term colleagues of Professor Avital Ronell who has been under investigation by the Title IX offices at New York University. Although we have no access to the confidential dossier, we have all worked for many years in close proximity to Professor Ronell. We have all seen her relationship with students. We wish to communicate first in the clearest terms our profound an [sic] enduring admiration for Professor Ronell. We deplore the damage that this legal proceeding causes her, and seek to register in clear terms our objection to any judgment against her. We hold that the allegations against her do not constitute actual evidence.

She deserves a fair hearing, one that expresses respect, dignity, and human solicitude.

Below the fold the original letter, with the bits Professor Butler now "rejects" stricken:

[T]he view that “woke” white-bashing is a harmless, justified, and perhaps even commendable form of “punching up” is now mainstream in liberal/progressive culture in North America (and some other Western countries)....

The defense of “punching up” is a fundamental part of the left-identitarian ideology (also known as “social justice” or “intersectionality”) that has become the quasi-official progressive creed in the 2010s. In this creed, all human interaction is seen primarily through the lens of “power dynamics” and the “oppression/privilege” hierarchy; thus, hostile or demeaning speech is judged by whether the speaker and the target are “privileged” or “marginalized.”

There are many reasons, both moral and practical, to criticize this ideology. It inevitably undermines modern Western society’s hard-won taboo on racial insults and is likely to provoke a backlash. It relies on crude and often skewed definitions of power, privilege and oppression—so that, for instance, sarah Jeong, a Harvard Law School graduate and successful journalist from a minority group with higher income and lower incarceration rates than white Americans, can outscore an unemployed white high school dropout in “oppression points.” (Or so that Jeong supporter Rani Molla, another journalist with an elite degree and from a thriving demographic, can deride “whiny” rural white workers at a chicken processing plant.)

However, the normalization of “punching up” can also do more immediate and tangible harm. In many cases, it can enable and excuse abusive behavior supposedly motivated by righteous anger or “anti-oppression” activism.

We've certainly seen some of this mindless nonsense in philosophy cyberspace, though not from me! As someone quipped recently on facebook, I punch up, down and sideways--since the deserving come in all tiers of social status!

Gayatri Spivak, University Professor at Columbia, wrote, “I’d rather not comment … Loyalty gets in the way of the law.” It’s a reasonable position: she’s not going to criticize a friend publicly. But of course not defending a friend implies the friend is guilty as charged — loyalty and the law would not be at odds otherwise....

Sam Weber, Professor of German at Northwestern, said he signed the letter because “at the time I was told that NYU was about to either fire Avital or give her the option of resigning, and that this would take place in a matter of days … For me, the letter was meant to testify to the respect I have for Avital and her work, not to judge the merits of ‘the case.’” The letter they all signed, however, wasn’t just about the value of Avital’s work. It declared that the signers sought “to register in clear terms our objection to any judgment against her” [emphasis mine].

John Hamilton, Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Harvard and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures there, offered a similar explanation: “I signed the letter to support a friend I’ve known for 30 years and who always acted respectfully. Avital can be flirtatious and I could imagine her crossing lines in a campy way; usually it was nothing more than fun. Obviously this person didn’t feel that way, and these accusations have to be taken very seriously.” And yet the letter also declared that the student who filed the complaint was “animated” by “malicious intention,” despite the fact that most of the signers didn’t know anything about what “animated” Nimrod Reitman....

Jonathan Culler, Distinguished Professor of French and Comp Lit at Cornell, wrote, “I think that signatories to Judith Butler’s letter probably varied a lot in how much they knew about the accusations. I certainly don’t regret signing, because I don’t believe the accusations of sexual misconduct. Professor Ronell certainly does write over-the-top emails, as all her correspondents know.” He accepted her defense that Nimrod “reciprocated,” and pointed out that if Nimrod had been “upset” by the emails, “he could have chosen to work with someone else” — which indeed often happens with grad students....

Emily Apter, Chair of Comp Lit at NYU, was less forthcoming about the letter of support she signed: “I am not able or willing to discuss the case,” she wrote, a bit cryptically. Cynthia Chase, Professor of French and Comp Lit at Cornell, responded by repeating verbatim the conclusion of the letter: “The allegations against Avital Ronell do not constitute actual evidence, but rather support the view that malicious intent animated and sustains this legal nightmare” — this despite the fact that “actual evidence” was now public in the form of Avital’s emails.

The New YorkTimes also published 943 comments on the article. One of the most striking was from “Lady Professor” in Los Angeles, who wrote “as a feminist … who has been teaching for more than 20 years.” She offered her advice:

Q: Is it ever OK to get in bed with your advisee? A: No. It is never, ever OK to get in bed with a student. You should not get in bed with ANY student from your institution. If the student is in a class you are teaching, or is your advisee, you should refrain from getting in bed with them until they have graduated… Q: How about going over to my student’s apartment when my electricity goes out? A: Don’t you have other friends who can help you in this situation? Remember that your student and advisee does not have power in this relationship and cannot easily turn you away or ask you to leave. Don’t go there. I repeat: don’t go there… Q: I’m campy and flirty. I want to send campy, flirty emails to my advisee. A: DO NOT SEND FLIRTY EMAILS TO A STUDENT. EVER. Q: But I just want to say that he’s a sweet cuddly baby! A: Do not do it. NO. Keep it professional. Q: But we share culture and he will understand my sly and playful flouting of convention. A. What is wrong with you?

So we have a student complaining of unwanted sexual attention and physical contact, which a powerful mentor pressured him to submit to and participate in; and we have a professor arguing that she thought the student’s participation in the relationship was consensual and welcomed, but upon learning that he was telling friends she was a “monster” who made him “want to throw up from disgust,” she concluded that he had been “duplicitous”: manipulating and exploiting her to advance his own career, then turning on her when his career failed to advance.

The academic community is indebted to Prof. Wiener for getting some of these folks to open up to him about what they thought they were doing and in the process reveal their depraved moral sensibilites. The law has many failures, but it is very good at holding self-important fakers to account.

The Sunday Times article is behind a paywall, but I had put the reporter in touch with Prof. Bernd Huppauf [the 'u' should have an umlaut, but I can't add that in this software), the former Chair of German at NYU who hired Avital Ronell, and whose own article is forthcoming this week; Professor Huppauf shared the piece with the reporter, who includes a first excerpt in this article:

The row continues to spill out across the academic world. In an extraordinary intervention, Professor Bernd Huppauf, who hired Ronell at NYU before clashing with her, has written a excoriating feature for a German periodical that will be published soon. In the piece, which has been shown to The Sunday Times, Huppauf describes how Ronell has “sadistic tendencies” and sought to “discredit me” and “destroy me as a person”, at one point claiming that she had publicly labelled him an anti-semite.

Of Ronell’s time in the department, he writes: “Contradiction was heresy and heretics were rebuked or excluded — not always with a smile, often ironic, mocking, sardonic.”

He adds: “Even if one is familiar with the closed world of the university, it is hard to believe how many years had to pass before this abuse of power could reach the public and the sexualisation of her teaching was even mentioned."

It’s well known that Ronell was a student and acolyte of Jacques Derrida...But their relationship takes on a different coloration in Benoît Peeters’ authoritative biography “Derrida,” which reports that Ronell began an affair with Derrida’s son Pierre while she was staying with the family for the Christmas holidays in 1979, when she was 27 and Pierre was 16. They moved in together the following year (after Pierre's graduation from high school), living for a time in a Paris apartment borrowed from one of Derrida’s colleagues. Her relationship with Pierre, Ronell told Peeters, “was a way of becoming part of the family. … For me, those years in Paris correspond to a really lovely dream.”

Thanks to many different readers, including new ones, who have been sending me links to the latest.

1. Another NYU professor, Lisa Duggan, who appears to be a friend and ally of Professor Ronell's, reports the following:

When NYU determined her not responsible for many of the charges against her, but responsible for sexual harassment via email and for nonsexual contact, they initially announced a decision to revoke her tenure and terminate her. She could not solicit support. When prominent academics organized a letter about her case (they were not solicited to do so by Ronell), they could not admit any knowledge that they had of the circumstances (through their networks, not via Ronell). The elitism of that letter, as objectionable as it truly is, was a hastily concocted weapon to persuade NYU to back up from a draconian penalty out of all proportion to the charges sustained. NYU administrators would understand and respond to power and status. The draconian penalty they at first considered was likely adopted to avoid a threatened lawsuit from the accuser (whose husband Noam Andrews is a member of a wealthy New York real estate family, presumably well able to fund lawsuits). The letter put them on notice that confidentiality would not fully cloak their actions. Caught between money and academic prominence, NYU backed down and put Ronell on a year’s unpaid leave instead.

Put aside the sophomoric rationalization for the now infamous Butler letter (I do find it hard to believe that this passes as "critical analysis" in certain circles), there are three interesting factual assertions here: first, that NYU's original decision was to terminate Ronell for her misconduct; second, that the infamous Butler letter caused the University to opt for a less draconian punishment; and third, that Ronell was not involved in soliciting the Butler letter. If even half the allegations in the plaintiff's complaint are accurate, it's not surprising that the original remedy would have been termination. Consider just this remarkable allegation from paragraph 101 of the complaint:

Bolstering Reitman’s fear of Ronell’s wrath, another NYU student filed a Title IX complaint against her for racial discrimination. Contrary to instructions that she had purportedly received from NYU’s Title IX personnel, Ronell told everyone in the German Department –including Reitman–about the complaint and admitted to Reitman of having spread untruths about the complainant at other universities in an effort to sabotage the student’s career. Ronell refused to speak the complainant’s name and instead referred to her as “the skunk” to other students and faculty, and openly stated to Reitman and others (in Reitman’s presence) that she would ruin the student’s career for having reported her. Having seen what Ronell did to a fellow student who had filed a Title IX complaint against her, Reitman knew that such was not an option if he wanted to ever have a career in academia.

If these allegations are true, there should be plenty of witnesses to bolster them. And if they are true, it likely would have been known to NYU's Title IX office. And if it were known to them, it would help explain why termination was recommended initially in response to a new Title IX complaint. (Professor Duggan claims, as the CHE has as well, that Professor Ronell has been suspended without pay, but as the New York lawyer, friend of the plaintiff's attorney, notes we don't actually have evidence that the suspension is "without pay".)

Prof. Duggan also asserts that Prof. Ronell played no role in soliciting the infamous Butler letter, but that is hard to square with the statements by Prof. Christiane Voss noted earlier. NYU, which has acknowledged that it is now investigating "retaliation" claims, will presumably have to reach a verdict on this.

John Hurt (1892-1966) was a sharecropper and handyman for most of his life, before being rediscovered during the 1960s "folk music revival." His striking visage excudes a quiet and gentle dignity. His influence can be seen more in certain aspects of folk rock, or in bands like the Grateful Dead and Hot Tuna. Here's a selection of his best performances. We'll start with the 1928 recording of "Frankie," during his aborted attempt to make a career as a performer:

The later recordings all come from the period of his rediscovery and fame starting in the early 1960s. We'll start with a video of a live performance of his version of the traditional spiritual "You've Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley," which gives a nice sense of his distinctive guitar playing style:

Several readers sent along a link to this German article in which Ronell--not someone "on behalf of Ronell" as before--continues to attack the plaintiff as a "needy" person who is seeking revenge against her after she refused to help him with his publication plans. Putting Title IX "retaliation" issues to one side (I think Prof. Ronell has buried herself already on that front) this is only a sensible strategy if, in fact, she can provide decisive evidence in support of this attack on the complainant. I get the distinct impression that she and her supporters are not getting legal advice in this matter, and I suspect this strategy will not work out well for her, but since a lawsuit has been filed, we may well find out what the underlying facts really are.

UPDATE: Prof. Ronell has now given a similar interview to CHE, making many of the same points she made in talking to Welt.

1. The former NYU graduate student has sued both NYU and Professor Ronell in connection with his sexual harassment allegations. The complaint is here, although I have not had an opportunity to review it. (ADDENDUM: Paragraphs 14-22 give a summary of the main allegations.)

2. A New York lawyer, who is friends with the plaintiff's attorney, reports that at the time the now infamous Butler letter was circulated for signatures NYU had already found Ronell guilty of sexual harassment, and the only question was the punishment.

3. Prof. Ronell has issued a statement denying all of the plaintiff's allegations. I am not sure this statement helps her case. First, the statement acknowledges that at the very same time that the plaintiff was sending affectionate-sounding e-mails to Prof. Ronell he was describing her to others as a "monster." That would seem to support the plaintiff's account that he felt pressured into behaving as Ronell wanted him to behave. Second, the statement effectively offers an explanation for why the plaintiff did not file a Title IX complaint with NYU right away: namely, that he was trying to secure a job. Having failed to do so, he no longer had any reason to take a "hands-off" approach to the harassment he had endured.

As an amusing aside, the statement appears at a website set up by Robert Craig Baum, a Ronell devotee and protege. Several days ago, before the NYT story appeared, I received the following e-mail from Mr. Baum from his gmail address:

If you are interested to move to the front of the line for an exclusive interview with Avital Ronell, please let me know so I can arrange the Q&A in writing.

Warmly, Robert Craig Baum Publicist

Mr. Baum was apparently not aware that actual publicists have work e-mails and don't type out "publicist" to prove their bona fides. A little research revealed who he was, so I simply let this pass in silence.

...which he also founded and through good stewardship turned into an important forum, especially for longer pieces and pieces that cut across disciplinary boundaries related to ethics. I hope his successor follows the principles he lays out in his farewell statement.

I, at least, intend to boycott them, and here's a few examples of why:

1. CUP has a policy, in author bios, of not listing publishers of an author's books unless they were published by CUP. I only learned of this petty stupidity when the editor of a CUP volume to which I was contributing informed the contributors of this fact. This editor, to her credit, objected, and finally CUP gave in (at least for this volume!).

2. CUP has taken to inserting clauses into contracts requiring authors to keep the terms of the contract confidential! I had never seen such a clause before in a publication contract. I struck that clause in the last contract from them I was asked to sign.

3. CUP (unlike, for example, OUP and Routledge) will not permit papers to be shared on Internet platforms like SSRN until one year after publication.

4. A Portuguese graduate student wanted to translate an essay of mine that had appeared in a CUP volume a number of years ago, in order to make it available on an open-access Brazilian journal. The student was offering to undertake the translation without compensation. CUP wanted 190 GBP for the rights to translate this less than 20-page essay. I told the student not to bother, and that I would provide other work from publishers that were not engaged in price-gauging of scholars that can not afford such extravagant fees.

I have other doubts that are more specific to the philosophy catalogue, but I'll save those for another day. In any case, authors may want to look elsewhere and also to be alert to and protest some of the policies described above.

UPDATE: CUP relented on point #4, after I pressed them quite hard. First, they reported that half the fee, so 95 GBP, was for me. I said I'd be glad to waive that, and I suggested they reduce their portion of the fee to 10 GBP which I would then pay myself. They reported that they needed to charge 95 GBP in order to cover their administrative costs, which I pointed out wasn't plausible: clearly they were looking to make a profit at the expense of a graduate student and an institution that could ill afford this expense. At that point, they relented in this instance, but it does suggest that authors may have some leverage in cases where scholars without substantial resources want to make Anglophone work available to scholars and students working in other languages.